Protecting Marie (4 page)

B
ecause she was so exhausted, Fanny fell asleep easily. But she had forgotten to bring her fan downstairs, and so she tumbled off the futon at about one
A.M.,
nudged awake by the incessant sounds of the night. She heard a mousetrap snap in the basement. She heard the wind whooshing through the flue. She heard the radiator hiss and clank. But it was an eerie yelping sound that had jarred her awake completely, making it impossible to fall back asleep.

As she woke to the mournful noise, she was convinced that it was Nellie, and her heart pounded with alarm. Only when she felt her mother beside her and made out the frame of the mantel in the bleary light, did she realize where she was and that Nellie was long gone. It had been months since Nellie had cried in the night, months since she'd been Fanny's dog.

Fanny padded across the living room floor as quietly as possible. She grabbed her coat on her way to the kitchen and tossed it over her shoulders like a cape. I must have been dreaming, she thought.

After turning the weak stove-top light on, Fanny heated water for tea. She used a regular saucepan rather than the teakettle, because the kettle whistled shrilly and she didn't want to wake her mother. The tile floor was icy on Fanny's toes, so she hopped up onto the countertop while she waited for the water to boil. She swung her feet from side to side and back and forth.

When the water was ready, Fanny rinsed out her favorite mug and made strawberry tea in it. She had used it earlier for hot chocolate. The mug had been her favorite for as long as she could remember. Fanny didn't know who had given it to her. The mug was handmade, thrown on a wheel, the potter's illegible signature scratched sharply into the bottom. On one side, there was a kangaroo with a pointy joey peeking out of its pouch. On the other side, the words
LOVE AND HAPPINESS
were painted on in bouncy cursive writing.

Once when Henry was in a particularly cranky mood and had been hounding Fanny about her table manners throughout the course
of an entire dinner, Fanny held the mug up to him and said, “See, there's no father kangaroo. That's why it's my favorite cup. And that's why it says ‘love and happiness.'” Then she stormed out of the dining room without having any dessert.

Fanny couldn't use the mug without thinking of that incident, and yet the mug remained her favorite even when she regarded Henry as the best father ever and her only champion in the world.

Right now, Fanny didn't know what she thought of her father. She knew that her mother was right: Henry wouldn't ever bring Nellie back. But the statue confused her. Her father was many things—particular, short-tempered, orderly—but he wasn't evil ormean-spirited. And yet, the statue seemed to be nothing more than a cruel reminder of the happiest time of Fanny's life.

Fanny hoisted herself back up onto the countertop. She pulled her knees against her chest for warmth and stretched her flannel nightgown so tightly over her legs that she
could cover her feet completely with the ruffly trim. She stared into her tea, thinking about Nellie.

Fanny had wanted a dog all her life. Her best friend, Mary Dibble, always had a dog. In fact, sometimes the Dibbles had two or three, depending on which of the grown Dibble children were back at home, or if a stray happened by. It may have been at the Dibbles' that Fanny had first learned to love dogs, but it wasn't simply a case of seeing something your best friend has and wanting the same thing because that's what best friends do. Fanny sensed that from the moment she was born she was meant to have a dog. It was as though some unique and independent organ deep inside her, like a tiny heart, couldn't thrive properly without one.

Henry's resistance to owning a dog was just as strong as Fanny's desire. The more she pleaded for one, the more emphatic Henry's refusals became. He lectured her on the troublesome aspects of training a puppy, empha
sizing how time-consuming and filthy the whole undertaking was. None of the sermons convinced Fanny of anything except how stubborn her father could be.

During an especially passionate discussion about getting a dog—which turned into an especially passionate discussion about responsibility and Fanny's allowance—in desperation, Fanny said, “And don't you know, dog is God spelled backward?”

Henry looked puzzled for a moment. Characteristically, he raised one eyebrow, shrugged, and said, “But I don't believe in God. You know that.”

It finally got to the point where Fanny no longer confronted her father directly. But each year the words “a dog” appeared at the top of her Christmas list. And each year the words “a dog” appeared at the top of her birthday list. Fanny clipped dog cartoons from her parents'
New Yorker
magazines and hung them on the refrigerator with magnets at Henry's eye level. Whenever Fanny bought a card for Henry, she made sure to find one with an image of a dog
on it. Her personal favorites were those printed with William Wegman photographs.

Once, in a used bookstore, Fanny discovered a postcard of a reproduction of a Franz Marc painting. A smooth, creamy dog was lying in pure snow, its eye closed lazily, its paw slipped under its muzzle. Small shadowed dips in the snow encircled the dog. It took Fanny a minute to see them as hollows and not inky blue stones. The dog appeared to be so kind and lovable that Fanny thought, If an angel ever comes to earth as an animal, this is exactly the form it will take. At the time, the postcard had seemed like a charm, and just right for Henry's winter birthday, until days later when Fanny found it in the garbage, stained and saturated with wet coffee grounds.

For Henry's last birthday, his fifty-ninth, Fanny had Xeroxed a picture from one of the thick art history books that lined the bottom shelf of the bookcase in the living room. She'd decorated the image with colored pencils and glued it to a folded piece of construction paper. The painting she had chosen was Jan van
Eyck's
Giovanni Arnolfini and His Wife.
Jan van Eyck was one of the painters Henry most admired. Fanny had picked this particular painting because there was a little dog standing as firmly as a chunky stool right in the middle of the foreground. The text in the book (most of which Fanny didn't understand) referred to the dog as an obvious symbol of faithfulness. On her homemade card, with a felt-tip pen, Fanny wrote,
JAN VAN EYCK'S PORTRAIT OF ARNOLD FEENEY, THE FAITHFUL LITTLE DOG (HA!).

Henry never seemed to react to the cards and cartoons—he'd only raise one eyebrow the way he always did. But even Henry couldn't help but laugh at Arnold Feeney, and he tacked the card to the wall in his studio.

Although Fanny regularly kept up with her practice of clipping cartoons and buying and making cards with dogs on them, she had all but given up hope of ever having a dog of her own. And so, on the hot, hot afternoon last June that Henry came home toting a small wiggly bundle of bones and black fur, Fanny
was completely stunned.

It was one of those moments in her life that she would never forget. She had been working in the garden in the front yard. Creeping charlie invaded the lawn and flower beds every year, and Henry paid her to keep the viney weeds under control. Fanny loved the mindlessness of the task and would have done it for free, but Henry offered her money, so she gladly took it. The temperature was in the nineties and the humidity was so high that Fanny wore only a bathing suit. She was kneeling on an old chair cushion, her dirty toes pushing against the soft, thick grass, when she heard her father's car round the corner a block away. She heard it pull up to the curb. She heard the door open and close. And then she heard the tiniest yelp. The tiniest, most lovely yelp.

When she turned and saw the puppy wriggling in Henry's arms, she trembled with joy. And she knew instantly by the way Henry looked at her that the puppy was hers.

Are you sure? she asked with her eyes.

Yes, he responded with his.

Everything froze. And Fanny trembled again. How long did everything remain still? Even the puppy was motionless. Perspiration dotted Henry's face and darkened his powder blue shirt. An overflowing basket hung from his shoulder. Fanny could see a rawhide chew-stick, a small furry football, red roses, and a bottle of champagne that reflected the sun and sparkled.

It was her mother's voice that made everything move again.
“Henry?”
Ellen called from the front door. “What's going on?”

Ellen ran down the porch steps and walkway toward Henry, and as she did she brushed against Fanny. When mother and daughter touched, Fanny's sense of time was altered again. Now, what she experienced seemed accelerated. She would remember only brief snatches that flitted rapidly.
Rat-a-tat-tat.
Fast, faster, faster.

She would remember her mother wiping her father's brow. And kissing him. “Are you sure you want to do this?” And, “New York?”
And, “Oh, I love you.”

She would remember her father's smile—curved and toothy. “I've had an incredible day.” And, “Now we're four.” And, “I think it'll be fine.”

She would remember the zigzaggy and uncoordinated way the puppy raced to her. And how it licked the salty sweat off her legs. And how it settled into her lap and kept licking her, this time her face. She would remember how her hands encompassed its round, pink belly. And how warm it was. And how it was like the world. She would remember its smell—hot and loamy and sweet-stinky and comfortable. And how she knew it was female. And how she sang, “Smelly, smelly, smelly. Smelly, smelly . . . Nellie.” And that was how the puppy got its name.

When things had settled down a bit and they were in the kitchen, Fanny learned why Henry was in such a good mood, why he had gotten the puppy.

“I had all but forgotten about sending the slides,” Henry explained. “And so, when the
gallery called the art office to say that they wanted to represent me, I was, well, elated. Understandably so.” Henry laughed deeply and it sounded like pure bliss to Fanny. “I've lusted after this gallery for years.”

“Will we get to go to New York?” Fanny asked.

“When they hang the solo show next year, we will.”

Fanny watched her father closely. He gestured enthusiastically while he spoke, and his face seemed to be going through an extensive workout. The veins near his temples pulsed, his eyes widened and narrowed, his nostrils flared, and his muscles twitched. Henry was usually rather reserved, and he usually moved with great economy, as if there were nothing worse than a wasted word or an unnecessary action. But that day he hummed about the kitchen, opening and closing cabinets and drawers, punctuating his sentences by waving a champagne glass above his head, and kissing Ellen and Fanny every time he passed them.

“Once it sank in,” Henry went on, “once I
believed it all to be true and not a dream, I thought, This calls for champagne. And as I rushed to the car to drive to the liquor store I saw that little flower cart on the library mall. And so—two dozen long-stemmed red roses for you,” he said, nodding to Ellen. “And right beside the flower cart, a shaggy student was stooped over a box of puppies. Free. He was giving them away. And so—a black, furry dream-come-true for you,” he said, nodding to Fanny.

Henry's excitement was somewhat confusing to Fanny. He was represented by galleries in Chicago and Milwaukee. He had had galleries in New York and Boston in the past. His work had been reproduced in several books, and his shows had been favorably reviewed in
Art in America
and other magazines. But Fanny didn't question Henry. She just assumed that being represented by this particular gallery was a big deal. She had gotten a puppy as a result. Nothing else needed to be explained. Nothing else mattered.

Henry popped the cork on the champagne.
They toasted him. And they toasted Nellie. Last New Year's Eve when Fanny's parents had let her taste champagne for the first time, it had made her feel headachy, but now she drank it without hesitation, she was so happy. After swishing each sip around her mouth, she'd swallow slowly with her eyes closed, letting the bubbles tickle her throat.

She was sitting on the cool floor with her legs spread out in a V. Nellie rolled and tumbled in the small space Fanny had made. When Nellie tried to jump over Fanny's leg, she fell onto her back and waved her legs in the air like an overturned bug.

Henry and Fanny laughed. Ellen smiled.

Her mother suddenly seemed quiet to Fanny. Ellen set her glass down and began arranging the roses. The petals were so dark they looked black at the innermost whorl. “They're extravagant,” Ellen said as she separated a few stems that were entwined and worked them into the vase. She tipped her head and arced it from one side to the other, admiring the flowers. As she rearranged a few
of the roses, she pricked herself on one of the huge thorns. “Ouch,” she said.

Henry came up behind her, turned her in his arms, and sucked her finger. “A small price to pay for all this happiness . . .”